


The Sand of the Desert

by originally



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7641121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment shared in the calm before the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sand of the Desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minarchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/gifts).



It had not taken long for Sir Malcolm’s vast house to change from feeling opulent to feeling oppressive. The front door had been reinforced and the windows barricaded. Malcolm’s man had engaged in some queer voodoo in the entryway and now kept a silent vigil on the staircase. Miss Ives had seconded herself on an upper floor to conduct her rituals, and Malcolm himself had vanished, taking off to wherever he disappeared to these days. Those few of us who remained had retreated to the drawing room.

The heavy velvet curtains and expensive wallpaper which had once spoken of wealth and taste now spoke of gloom, and imprisonment, and shadows in which monsters might make their home. The hissing gas lights made little impact on the sense of foreboding, though Mr Chandler and I had turned each of them up to their fullest strength. From their central position on the table, the scattered, disparate relics of the _verbis diablo_ seemed to whisper to me, call to me, tendrils of something ancient and evil curling around my mind. I put my hand to my chest, unthinkingly, to clutch the amulet that my mother had hung there when I was a boy against the advice of the reformists. _Except Yahweh keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain_. Tonight, I wondered, would our wakefulness be fruitful?

“Everything all right, Mr Lyle?” Mr Chandler asked gruffly from his place at the mantle. He had not taken well to confinement, and had paced a rut into the Persian rug in front of the fireplace. The firelight glinted off the brass buckle on his belt and threw patterns of shadows over his broad forearms where he had rolled up his shirtsleeves.

“Indeed, Mr Chandler. Quite all right,” I assured him, although I did not feel it. He gave me a look that was half concern, half pity. It seemed so very long ago that I had flirted with him here. It had been my misfortune to become ensnared by a beast so dangerous as Evelyn Poole.

“Looks like the doc’s out for the count,” Mr Chandler said, shaking me out of my thoughts. He gestured with his tumbler of whisky to something behind me, and I turned to see that Dr Frankenstein had fallen into a fitful doze, sprawled on a chaise longue. He looked like he needed the sleep; his skin was waxy and pallid, and his brow feverish. I looked back to Mr Chandler, who gave a grim sort of smile and said, “Laudanum.”

I had recognised the signs, of course, and said as much. “I fear the good doctor fancies himself Lord Byron,” I added, and Chandler’s lips quirked at the corners.

“Have you partaken yourself, Mr Lyle?”

“Of opium? Alas,” I said, “though I confess my vice of choice was always _la fée verte_.”

His brow furrowed for a moment, before enlightenment dawned. “Absinthe,” he said. “I drank that once, with… a man I knew.”

There was something curious in his tone: a brand of wistfulness I thought I recognised, though surely that was my own foolish optimism. It was gone as quickly as it arrived, and something like a mask settled over Mr Chandler’s features.

“Was it in London you encountered laudanum addicts, Mr Lyle?” he said.

“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “it was in Cairo.”

“On a dig?”

"Dear boy," I said, scandalised, "you mean to say you envision me grubbing around in the dirt on my knees?"

He gave me something which I fancied approached a leer, but all he said was, "Forgive me. I was given to understand that you were an Egyptologist?"

"A scholar of language, yes. Of antiquity. In my younger and more vigorous days, I engaged in a number of expeditions to the classical world. That was before I became antique myself, of course."

"Oh, come now, Mr Lyle," he said. "A gentleman with such hair as yours could never be considered antique." And yes, the wicked gleam had definitely returned to his eye now. I, too, felt on firmer ground. This game was a familiar one, and there was something fairly comforting about it.

"Pish posh," I said, though I gave him a coy glance through my lashes. He gestured with the bottle toward me, a salute of sorts, and I allowed myself to be plied with a generous measure of single malt. It sloshed amber against the cut crystal of the tumbler, the firelight shining through it and causing strange, undulating lights to flicker over the skin of my hand. I seemed to myself unusually pale. I took a mouthful of whisky, letting it warm me from the inside out.

He poured another for himself. I watched his throat work as he swallowed, until he looked up and caught me. Surely I flushed and gave away the game, but he said nothing, only let his lips curve into a smirk. I cleared my throat. "As I was saying. An expedition, funded by the British Museum.”

It was idle conversation but neither of us felt like discussing the real issue of the day; the human mind is capable of a great deal of self-deception. I thought to myself that I should almost want my secret to be revealed, ruinous as it may be to my reputation and my wife, for then she would have no further power over me. I swallowed the last of my whisky and took a bold step forward, toward Chandler. His eyes raked up my form and I made my choice.

"Mr Lyle—" he began.

I raised my eyes to meet his gaze, fully, openly. "Who was he?" I asked. "Your fellow with the absinthe?"

In lieu of an answer, he stepped forward and pressed his lips to mine. It was heady, the scent of him: musky and masculine, leather and the lingering sharp smell of gunpowder. I breathed in hard, expecting him to recoil in disgust after a moment—but he did not. He cupped the back of my neck in one large hand and returned the kiss, bending me back like a swooning maiden from an opera. I let him manhandle me, my mouth parting in surprise as his tongue slipped between my lips.

A noise from above made us spring apart. I was sure that the grim look on his face must have been mirrored on my own. After a heartbeat, the screeching began, unearthly and inhuman and utterly terrifying.

“I would very much like to hear the end of that story later, Mr Lyle,” Chandler said, voice full of promise even as he drew his pistol from where it nestled at his thigh.

I followed him into the dark.


End file.
